Back to the roots - with Root Beer

Root beer has been drunk in the United States since the 18th century and sold since the 1840s. Written recipes for root beer have been documented since the 1860s. In the nineteenth century it was often drunk hot.

The apothecary Charles Elmer Hires was the first to successfully market a commercial brand of root beer. He introduced a commercial version of root beer at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and began selling his extract.

In 1919, Roy Allen opened his root beer stand in Lodi, California, which led to the development of A&W Root Beer. Allen offered his homemade root beer in cold, frosty cups.

Since safrole, a major ingredient in sassafras, was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960 as a carcinogen, most commercial root beers are flavoured with artificial sassafras flavouring, with a few using a safrole-free sassafras extract.

Commercial root beer is now produced in Canada and in every state in the USA. It is also exported to many other countries and is also available in Germany.

A well-known use is the addition of vanilla ice cream to make a root beer float.